View full sizeKent State University is one of six Ohio institutions honored for its commitment to diversity and inclusion.Kent State University

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Six Ohio colleges have been honored for demonstrating outstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion.

Case Western Reserve University, Cuyahoga Community College, Kent State University, Ohio State University, the University of Akron and the University of Cincinnati were among 56 institutions to receive the annual Higher Education Excellence in Diversity award from INSIGHT into Diversity magazine. The winners are featured in the magazine’s November issue.

CWRU, Akron and Cincinnati also received the award in 2012.

Nearly every institution today has a division or department that focuses on diversity.

The award recognizes an institution’s achievement and commitment to diversity and inclusion on campus through initiatives, programs and outreach, student recruitment, retention and completion and faculty and staff hiring practices, CWRU said in a press release.

“Diversity work in higher education requires collaboration and strategic engagement with multiple stakeholders and constituencies throughout the campus community on a regular basis,” said Marilyn Sanders Mobley, Case Western Reserve’s vice president for Inclusion Diversity and Equal Opportunity—a cabinet-level position created in 2008 to foster diversity and inclusiveness campus-wide.

Kent State's Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion oversees the university’s diversity and inclusion initiatives with the goal of maximizing individual and collective contributions and creating an environment that welcomes diversity of thought, personal growth, academic attainment and above-average achievement, the university said in a release‎.

Coaching students helps them succeed: Individualized coaching of college students boosts student persistence and completion, and is less costly than financial aid programs and other intervention methods, according to a new article published online in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association.

Students regularly contacted by counselors offering academic and life-skills coaching were more likely to persist with their studies and graduate, wrote Stanford University researchers Eric Bettinger and Rachel Baker.

“The Effects of Student Coaching: An Evaluation of a Randomized Experiment in Student Advising,” found that by helping students identify success strategies, use available resources, and advocate for themselves, coaches help students overcome the kinds of adverse academic and life challenges that often contribute to dropping out. Coaches also assist students with defining clear goals, connecting their daily activities with long-range goals, and building time management and study skills.

“We assume that students know how to behave,” Bettinger and Baker wrote in their article. “We assume that they know how to study, how to prioritize, and how to plan. However, given what we know about rates of college persistence, this is an assumption that should be called into question.”

Loan repayments should be simpler: The array of different repayment options on federal student loans should be replaced with a single, income-based repayment system that automatically deducts payments from borrowers’ paychecks, according to a new policy proposal published Monday by the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project and reported in Inside Higher Ed.

The paper argues that the current federal loan system (including its income-based repayment options) does not do a good job of preventing defaults because it is too complicated and burdens young workers with large payments when they are least able to handle them, the website reported.

Under the proposal, employers would withhold a fixed percentage from individuals’ paychecks in the same way they already deduct payroll taxes. Any outstanding loan balance that is not repaid after 25 years would be forgiven and the amount would not be considered taxable income, as it is under the federal government's current income-based repayment programs.

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